


In What Blood Tread

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work, Смерть Кощея Бессмертного | The Death of Koschei the Deathless (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Bisexuality, Bittersweet Ending, Dark Magic, Dubious Consent, General Unpleasantry on All Sides, Loss of Autonomy, Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy, Multi, Power Imbalance, Quests, Rewriting History, Seduction to the Dark Side, Storytelling, War violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 11:27:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18809971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: Once upon a time, a girl loved war and a boy loved magic. And for a short time, in a world where nothing was as it seemed and the bounds of fairy stories ruled their lives, they loved (or perhaps they simply lusted for) each other.In short, Marya Morevna is a warrior queen, Ivan wants the one thing he can't have, and a wizard in a dungeon plots to end their world.





	In What Blood Tread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Port](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Port/gifts).



Once upon a time, there was a girl named Marya Morevna from whom nothing much was expected. She was a royal princess, the daughter of the greatest king her people had known in many years, and like most insufficient children of exalted parentage, Marya Morevna had very high expectations for herself. Someday, she told herself, she would excel, and her mother would look at her and smile. There would be no more sad, disappointed looks, no more  _ gods save this kingdom when I die _ s, and no more aching, crushing loneliness as she struggled over her schoolwork.

Like all the other noble girls of her country, Marya trained tirelessly in the Seven Arts of Womanhood, but she excelled at only two of them. Weaving was a failure, and her warp and weft tangled into a spiderweb of knots. Her tapestries were blobby, stained messes, bulging with missed stitches and thread gone stringy from being undone so many times. She was equally unskilled at Music, being possessed of a tin ear and clumsy fingers. At Rhetoric, her tongue tied itself into sputters and gasps, and her voice possessed no womanly gravitas, but squeaked childishly, and her studies of Literature were pure torture, for she could not spell and saw only pretty words in the poetry of others. Her studies of Magic possessed no spark, and she could not touch the ground and make things bloom from it, nor could she build the great barrier walls of energy expected from the daughter of a king. 

But in the studies of War and Hunting, things were different. Marya learned to tread lightly, to ghost over ground and draw arrows back, to strike the hare and the hart. She understood tactics and swordsmanship. Someday, she decided, she would be feared on the plain of battle. In the wars that were to come, she would make herself known. For there were few things Marya Morevna loved more that the hiss of a downward-swinging blade, the whistle of arrows, the soft crunch of a leaf in a silent forest. She was drawn to violence as some girls are drawn to poetry or to the music of the gudok. 

At the age when the other girls of the royal court snuck off in the purple twilight of late spring and the white nights of summer to visit sweethearts in the men’s quarters, Marya followed them. But she sought no trysts. Instead, she found the men who had once been soldiers, who now sat quietly at windows and on back stoops in their weighted robes, never to run again. 

“Tell me about battle,” she would say to them. “What is it really like?” 

Sometimes they talked to her. Sometimes they spat at her. Sometimes they were silent. They were all alike in their own unhappy ways, she thought. All of them from different lands where they had ruled their own fates. But now they were here, in their separate quarters, expected to wait peacefully for any woman of the court who wished to take them, in marriage or otherwise. The  male captives were also expected to learn the Arts of Manhood: to spin thread, to dance, to heal, to tend the fields and fish the streams, to build houses, and to be in all things decorous and gentle. Marya had no interest in that. She thought men were silly creatures, with nothing in their heads but air. But the women she so desperately wanted to impress told her nothing, so she gleaned her information from elsewhere, and what she learned was that nothing terrified foreign men more than a woman with a sword. 

When she was fifteen, she accompanied her mother the king on a border raid. The battle was fierce, and the carrion birds swarmed thickly in the sky before the end. Marya was like a living flame upon the field, cutting down men, protecting the women under her command, taking many captives. When her mother found her, she was soaked in blood, her dark hair drenched with scarlet. Beneath her arm was the helm of the enemy commander. She grinned, and for the first time, her mother smiled. Marya Morevna, who was so bad at all the arts but War and Hunting, had excelled for the first time. 

After the battle, they called her Marya the Fair, Marya the Warrior, Marya Morevna of the Steel Eyes. She threw herself into study of all the things that would make her a king with a renewed vigor, because little bumbling Marya had proved herself on the field of battle. And, she decided, she would continue to prove herself. She would be a greater queen than even her mother. When the history books were written, they would say “This was the age of Marya Morevna, the greatest king and greatest warrior our land has ever known.” 

***

At the same time, in another kingdom, where the king was a man and magic was viewed with suspicion and distrust, for it was probably women’s work and therefore duplicitous, there lived a young prince. He was called Ivan, and his father expected the world from him. 

Ivan led a surprisingly idyllic and happy life until he was ten, kept apart from the intrigues of power and the expectations of his father. During his early childhood, the kingdom his father ruled had been ravaged by a series of plagues. Ivan, being the precious heir, had been sent with his three sisters to a secluded country palace surrounded by dark woods and green and tangled gardens. It was here, behind high golden gates built to keep out wolves and demons and witches, that Ivan witnessed magic for the first time. 

He had escaped from his tutors on one bright, sunny afternoon to run below the canopies of trees and vines and to hide himself in the garden green. The shade was cool but the sun warmed his face, and he dodged through the emerald web of foliage, not sure where his pursuers were, if he had any, or what he was running to. It was quite enough to be outside on such a beautiful day, away from the monotony of lessons.

Ivan stopped running abruptly when he heard voices from a shady corner. They were recognizable voices, which he was used to hearing raised in song, or telling him to straighten himself up before his parents came to visit. This meant, he decided, that his beloved sisters had come to the garden as well, also escaping the humdrum duties of day-to-day life. 

In the little garden corner, they were laughing. Marya, Olga, and Anna stood in a triangle, light arcing between their hands. It shimmered, a humming net above their heads, and Ivan was transfixed. He made a motion as if to join his sisters, but he must have snapped a twig, for Olga’s head snapped round, and she fixed him with a piercing, amber glare. 

Her baleful look instilled in Ivan an immediate desire to flee. He was already turning to run when Marya called out for him to wait. He halted, terrified. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, though she looked tall and terrifying. “I just want to make you promise that you’ll tell no one what you saw.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because this palace is a gilded cage,” said Anna. “We are birds with clipped wings here. And magic makes us fly.” 

“They’ll take it away if they know we’re casting spells. Father doesn’t like witches. You wouldn’t remember,” Olga said,  “But before the plague, before we were sent here, he had all the witches killed. He outlawed magic.” 

“You’re not witches,” Ivan said. “You’re Marya and Olga and Anna.” 

Marya laughed. 

“And we’re witches just the same, little brother.”

“We’re witches just the same,” the others chorused. 

Ivan, even young as he was, knew that he was not included in the “we”. Magic was women’s work, and he was no woman. But the beauty of the spells remained, and he could not resist asking his sisters a single question. 

“Can I learn?” 

Anna laughed. 

“You’re to be a king, Ivan. It wouldn’t be fair if you knew magic.” 

Olga looked owlishly at him. 

“One cannot have power and Power, Ivan. It throws off the balance.” 

They did not make spells again that day, but gamely played at ball with their brother. But for all the days and months and years after, Ivan saw the magic sparking in his mind’s eye. He spent his days in the library, surrounded with books of history and travelogues about strange lands, and dreaming of the world beyond the country palace, beyond the borders of his father’s kingdom, where magic was common and animals spoke like men. Even after the plague ended, and he returned to the city, the forest, which he knew must hide those far-off lands, still loomed in his dreams, filled with secrets. 

***

Marya Morevna was crowned on the battlefield and sanctified in blood. The sky itself was red, and the day was closing, and the mud clung to Marya’s legs. Around her, blackened pines stood like spikes against the evening sky. 

“Has someone found the king’s body?” she asked one of her mother’s other generals when she presented the crown to her. 

“We have. She is at peace and we will bury her in the palace graveyard when we return.” 

“And the prisoner?” Marya asked. “Is Koschei the Deathless restrained?” 

“Of course, your Majesty. The wizard is being transported to the palace as  we speak.” 

“Put him in a different room. The chamber beneath the main annex of the palace may do. Three times have we captured him, and twice he has escaped. There will not be a third time.” 

“Of course, your Majesty.” 

There would be ceremonies later, mourning and another coronation, when all the blood was dry and Marya Morevna’s mother was in the ground. She would be cleaned and sanctified with sacred oil. But her people were a warlike people, and if their king died in battle, no less sacred an ointment than blood would be used to anoint her successor. And so, for now, her hair was sticky with battle-blood and her crown was stained. 

The ravens were flocking the corpses, the good women and the enemy men who’d fallen in battle all alike becoming feasts for the birds. Marya remembered a story she’d heard once, a tale of how the princes of the birds married human witches who left their families and put on cloaks of feathers so that they could shapeshift at will. 

_ Are any of these ravens bird-wives? Is it worth it to fly if you must forsake your people and eat corpses forever?  _

_ You are a carrion-eater too, _ the wind seemed to sigh. 

Marya ignored it, and focused instead on the memory of  bright swing of the sword, the clouds of dark magic swirling around her and only her blade lighting the way. Her mother had fallen, but she, the insignificant one good at nothing, had survived. War was her home, and battle sang in her heart. She would be a good king, for her tutor was the battlefield. She would rule wisely and well, and she would make all the lands around her fear the kingdom of women. 

She smiled then, a bright sharp smile. The dark magics of Koschei the Deathless were defeated, and defeated they would stay. She had done this with her sword. Koschei the Deathless, the man who’d so perverted the life-stream of his magic that he was unable to die, had been brought low by one of the women he so disdained. By Marya Morevna. This, if nothing else, she decided, would keep her name in the stories. 

She turned from the plain of slaughter, and, and walked with a new gravitas. Marya Morevna was king now. She was ready. 

***

Immediately before the great battle with Koschei, plague again ravaged Ivan’s father’s kingdom. Ivan heard the bells tolling one morning as he sat in the library, reading a long epic on famous magicians. He’d arrived at the part where Koshchei became Deathless, and it seemed faintly ridiculous that mortality should interrupt his reading now, when he had just reached the point when the epic touched on immortality. They’d known of the rumored outbreaks in towns across the realm for weeks now, and Marya, Olga, and Anna had already been sent to the country palace. Ivan remained with his parents, an exercise in rulership, his father said. 

For a few days after the first ringing of the bells, all was ordinary, and Ivan continued to read and to shadow his parents in councils. They were within, and the plague was without. He spared a pitying thought for his sisters, cowering out in the countryside with none but a few trusted servants. 

No one knew who first brought the plague into the palace. Perhaps it arrived in a swath of fabric, or nestled in the cloak of a petitioner. Perhaps the rats had gotten into the stores again. But whatever the reason, all the same it arrived, an unwelcome guest haunting the halls, and the servants sickened first, and then Ivan’s parents. They lingered for a few days, coherent but ill. On the last day, Ivan’s father called him in. 

“Son, you’re the king now.” 

His father looked so weak, there on the pillows, abandoned by all but his only son.

“You are  _ not _ going to die,” Ivan said, and hated himself for how childish he sounded. 

“I am going to die, whether you like it or not, Ivan.” 

“But what will I do? I’m too young to rule.” 

His father’s breath rasped and gurgled. He reached for Ivan with a claw-like hand and Ivan jerked away. He knew the perils of illness too well to risk touch, and his father smiled ruefully. It looked like it hurt.

“You’ll have to learn.” 

His mother pushed herself into a seated position, and was wracked with a hacking cough. 

“And please, please, give your sisters to the first men who ask for their hands. You mustn’t ruin their prospects because you’re lonely,” she said. 

She’d always worried so, and Ivan felt tears prickle in his eyes. 

“I promise,” he said. “I’ll do all this.” 

Ivan wanted to grip their hands, but he knew both parents would chastise him if he did, for they could not afford to lose him to the sickness. A woman could not inherit the throne, and the kingdom did not need a succession crisis on top of a plague, for Ivan had no brothers. And so, Ivan did nothing but keep watch at the deathbed until, finally, they succumbed to the cruel disease. And once he’d laid his parents’ bodies in the royal cemetery, he mounted a horse and galloped through the night to the country palace. 

The king was dead. Long live the king.  

***

Ivan arrived at the edges of the forest as the first snow of winter began to fall, softly brushing the tips of the pines. He shivered, for the night was dark and the moon obscured by the thick blanket of snow-clouds. But the windows were lit, and his sisters stood in a row to greet him, each holding a single candle. They were dressed in black from head to toe, but it seemed that flames glittered in their eyes. 

“Welcome, Ivan,” said Marya. 

“Welcome, brother,” said Olga. 

“Welcome, king,” said Anna. 

“What news from the stricken city do you bring?” they chorused as one. 

Ivan shivered, the familiar thrill of the forbidden coursing up his spine. Was this magic? He felt that he was part of a rite at last. 

“Our parents are dead, and I must marry you to the first suitor who asks for your hand,” Ivan said. 

“Wait for spring,” said Olga softly. “What will happen will happen in spring. But give us leave to mourn a while.” 

And so they mourned in the palace by the forest the whole winter through. And when the spring came, Marya smiled a secret sort of smile at her sisters, and it was as if the ice over all their hearts had melted. 

“Ivan,” she said, “why don’t we go and walk in the garden? It’s spring, and the flowers will be blooming.” 

Ivan, ever-gallant, took her hand. The sun was warm but the breeze in the garden was crisp, and the sky was an eggshell blue. He shielded his eyes against the brilliance, and watched a hawk, high in the sky. Marya watched it too, and Ivan felt a frisson of power in the air. 

“Marya…” he said, but the hawk in the sky spiralled closer and closer, until it swooped in front of them. 

It was not a hawk, but a falcon, and Marya’s face lit up to see it. She spoke something Ivan could not quite make out, a word tossed on the brilliant spring wind. The falcon twisted and writhed in the air, and quite suddenly, a man clothed in feathers stood before the two of them. He bowed smartly. 

“Ivan Tsarevich,” said the falcon-man, “I am the Prince of Falcons. Give me leave to marry your sister, the Princess Marya.” 

Because he had promised their parents, Ivan nodded. Marya beamed, and suddenly, she and the falcon were both gone in a beam of light. Ivan blinked, but all he saw were two hawks high in the sky, and all he had was a feeling that his sister was gone forever. 

In the summer, an eagle came for Olga. 

In the fall, a raven claimed Anna. 

In the winter, Ivan was left alone to get to the business of ruling, which lacked magic entirely. He boredly looked at papers, and listlessly planned for relief efforts to his most plague-ravaged domains. His council despaired. 

“I long for my sisters,” Ivan said. “That’s what this apathy must be. I pray you, sirs, allow me to search for them.” 

The council, who had ruled wisely and well during the plague, were only too happy to let him go. And so, Ivan mounted a horse, and he stood before the dark forest that bordered his kingdom. The sky was gray with storm-clouds, and hung heavy, threatening rain. The forest gates stood ajar. Ivan squared his shoulders, and he felt a thrill of magic in his soul. 

“I go to search for my sisters,” he said aloud. 

_ I go to search for magic,  _ he said within. 

***

Marya Morevna was bone-weary. She relished these moments, after the din of battle subsided, when she could sit in her tent and dream of a hot bath and good food. The war had been long and hard, but it was over now. No more men and no more monsters threatened her kingdom. She could rest. 

The servants had prepared a bath for her in the portable tub she preferred, and she sank gratefully into it, dipping her head beneath the surface. The water was lukewarm, and not as sweet-smelling as the palace’s water. But this was a military camp. She could endure it. She always did. 

A bell rang softly at the door of her tent as she washed herself. 

“Come in,” Marya called. 

It was one of her generals, a pale, freckled woman around her age, a former lover from the days before they were king and general. 

“Your Majesty, we found a man wandering the battlefield. He doesn’t know your name.” 

Marya shook her head. 

“How did he survive?”   
“He won’t say. He says he’s looking for a falcon, though.” 

“A madman then. Bring him in, and see if he’s worthy of keeping alive.” 

“He’s very comely, your Majesty. Even if he’s mad, he would be popular among the young women who frequent the men’s quarters,” the general said with a wink. 

Marya smiled. 

“Dress me, and we will meet this madman in my audience chamber.” 

The general helped her into her robes and armor, with a great deal of gentleness and care. Rising from the water, she once more became a king. And it was as a king that she appeared in the audience tent, resplendent in her royal glory.

In the audience tent, there stood a man. Her general had been right, Marya thought. He  _ was _ beautiful, all golden hair and green eyes, strong arms and a confident tilt of the head. Though his hands were tied behind his back, he looked unconcerned. Men were like that, she thought. They were always confident until they saw a woman with a sword. 

“Who are you?” she asked. 

“I am Ivan Tsarevich,” the young man said confidently. “I am looking for my sisters. Are you the queen of this land?” 

“And I am Marya Morevna,” Marya said. “The  _ king  _ of this land. We have no queens here.” 

“But you’re a woman.” 

“And?” 

“Women are queens,” Ivan said, his brow wrinkling with the effort of thought, “and men are kings. You can’t be a king and a woman.” 

“I am all the same. I was crowned according to the rites of my people. My mother was king before me, and my daughter shall be king after me.”

Ivan shook his head, still looking as if he could not grasp the concept. His face was so still, so handsome. And his confidence was so attractive. What did men like? She could not quite remember. It had been so long since she’d been to bed with one. Eager ladies of the court were always more amenable and pleasant to sleep with than the sad-faced men of the men’s dwellings. 

“You’re beautiful, O great queen,” Ivan said, trying to bow with bound hands. 

He was forward too. She liked that forwardness in a man, that refusal to lower his gaze according to the custom of her land. Marya had flouted convention her whole life. It was only right that her mate should flout it as well. 

“I want you,” she said to him. 

Ivan twitched backwards but Marya reached out and caught him by the wrist. He did not look frightened, but confusion laid across his gaze like a mist. She held him there, all quiet, the light shining in in golden patches through the walls of the tent. 

“You’re mine,” she said to Ivan-the-prince. “Will you call me yours as well?” 

His face reddened. 

“Yes,” he said. 

Marya led him through the audience tent and into her own quarters, where cushions and bedding were spread upon the ground. She tugged at Ivan’s clothing, pulling him towards her. Their bodies aligned tightly, both sharp, tuned instruments of war. Marya kissed him bruising hard and steel-fierce, and he returned the kiss with equal strength. 

_ We are well matched _ , she thought, as she pulled Ivan down to the cushions.

***

Luxury ill-suited Ivan. At first it had been a pleasant surprise, after weeks of hard riding and fruitless searching, to be the best-beloved of a queen. There were sweetmeats, and dainty foods, and a comfortable bed in which he could rest. He was waited on attentively by servants, and his every whim attended too. There was a beautiful woman, a beautiful queen, even, in his bed every night. But numbness set in, a functionless boredom he couldn’t quite seem to shake no matter what he did. 

Marya Morevna, the queen (for he could not quite think of her as a king) of this strange country where men waited and women ruled, visited him every night, touched him tenderly, made him forget for a while that he was straying from his questing. But afterwards, as they lay together in his house (for men had little houses here, away from the main hall, where they lived in idle seclusion far from women and the work of rulership), he would grow restless and turn to her. 

“When can I do something?” he asked.

Marya would look confused, a furrow forming between her steely eyes. 

“Do something? You are consort to a king. What need have you to do anything?” 

Ivan rolled over, turning his back to her. Marya placed a hand on his shoulder, soft and firm. If he had chosen to look, he would have seen her silvered in the moonlight, her dark hair falling about her shoulders like water-weed, her eyes glittering. 

“I know,” she said with a softness unusual for her, “that you are from an upside-down country where men rule and women obey, but that is no longer your country. Things are proper here. It is your duty to love and to honor, Ivan. Tell me what I can do so that I can make the life befitting a nobleman more pleasant for you.” 

“I don’t know,”  Ivan said. “I have sisters. I want to go find them. I don’t suppose they fled to your country with their bird-husbands, did they?” 

“Bird-wives are only stories here, but stories have a way of hiding truths. Perhaps they live in the woods beyond my borders.” 

“Then may I leave to seek them?” 

“Why would you want to do that? You have everything here.” 

He turned to face her, but he did not know how to tell Marya Morevna that all the luxury she gave him would always pale before magic, and that all the beauty of her world could not outdo a talking bird. So he remained quite still in the moonlight, and watched the shadows of the tree outside the window dance against the painted ceiling. 

Marya Morevna left in the morning while the sky was still grey, away to rule or make war. Ivan didn’t know either way, and he watched her go, feeling the same dull ache he had when his sisters’ magic slipped out of his life. 

***

Marya wiped dirt and blood from her face as she looked to the misty sky, the clouds threatening rain on the horizon. Crows circled, cawing harshly in the fog, and her boots sunk into the muddied ground. They’d won, but at what cost? She thought of a different battle, of blood, and smoke, and dark wizardry swirling about, of a mother dead and a new king crowned. After that, she’d been triumphant, but here, though she’d not lost anyone dear to her, she felt only worry and alarm. 

“You’re a silly thing, Marya Morevna,” she said to herself. “Today, you fought only men. Tomorrow, you will fight them again, and you will win, because that is what you do and what you have always done.” 

After battles such as this, it was Marya’s custom to find a way-shrine in the forest, to bathe her hands in the spring, and tie a ribbon to the little shrine in thanksgiving. This was, according to Ivan, a tradition unique to the kingdom of women and unknown in the kingdoms of men. Marya wondered if it ensured their victory. 

Alone, she walked into the dark eaves of the forest, following a slight sound of running water, and in a cool, quiet glade, she found the way-shrine in its mossy nook. Kneeling on the forest floor, Marya dipped her hands into the water. Lost in prayer, she was unable to hear the rustling behind her. 

“Just what do you think you’re doing, girl?” 

Marya jumped, turning quickly, one hand already on her sword, but saw only a wizened old woman, wrapped in a dowdy floral shawl, her grey hair escaping its braid to float wildly around her face from beneath a black scarf. She had the yellow eyes of a particularly perspicacious hawk, and her rictus of a smile revealed sharp, pointed teeth. Her arms were crossed, and she leaned against an enormous mortar and pestle. 

Marya bowed immediately. 

“Forgive me, Baba Yaga. I did not mean to raise a sword against you,” she said. 

“That’s better, girl,” said Baba Yaga, the witch of the woods. “What are you doing in my woods?” 

“I meant only to worship at this shrine to ensure my victory in the wars to come, for the sake of my kingdom.” 

“Ah. So you’re Marya Morevna, long may she reign.” 

Baba Yaga’s smile was not kind, and her tone acidic. Marya flinched but stood firm.

“I am she.” 

“You’re a damn fool. Your man, the one you found in battle, he’s going to cause you a great deal of trouble if you don’t do something for him sooner than later. You oughtn't leave those who would fly in chains.” 

“Ivan? He’s yet green, but he’ll learn soon. He satisfies me, and I should hope that I satisfy him.” 

“Satisfied? Hah!” Here, she barked out an unpleasant laugh. “He’ll never be satisfied until he can have what he most desires, and that’s a thing no man should ever have. Look at Koschei the Deathless.” 

“I don’t understand. The Deathless One has been defeated.”   
“You will someday, and when you do, come back to me.” 

Baba Yaga turned and returned to her hut. The chicken feet shuffled restlessly, and Marya took it as her cue to leave. She walked out of the trees with an uncharacteristic feeling of unease, and turned herself towards home. 

***

When Marya left to make war, Ivan was allowed freer rein than usual, and he wandered through the empty palace. The servants did not bother him, for he was their king’s best-beloved. Today was particularly quiet in the deserted women’s quarters, and he passed only a few young girls lurking in doorways. It was a brilliant summer day, the army had departed, and all left behind were at their tasks our out in the world. 

Ivan explored, feeling rather like a child again in the country palace by the forest. He wandered up stairs and down corridors, flitting from room to room and building to building until he came to a broad wooden door at the back of the council hall, simply and plainly carved with a motif of leaves and vines. He placed a hesitant hand on the door, and with little resistance, it swung open. A thrill of cold coursed up Ivan’s spine, and it occurred to him that perhaps he should not be in this quiet corner of the palace. Nonetheless, he forged ahead, as he had on the day in the garden when he saw his sisters at their magic. There was the same frison in the air as there had been on that day, and he had no choice but to follow it. 

Pushing open the door revealed a set of steps, down which Ivan trod, into the cool darkness of the cellar. His feet touched what felt like earth, and he realized that he had never quite comprehended that the main buildings of the palace had ordinary root cellars. 

“If I had my sisters’ magic, I could make a light,” he said aloud, for the darkness frightened and intrigued him in ways he could not quite put into words in any other way. 

From the shadows came a voice. 

“Well, boy, would you like to learn to use your sisters’ magic, then?” 

Ivan jumped, and suddenly the room was glowing dimly. It was a dark cellar chamber with walls stained by an indeterminate liquid and a floor of packed, dark dirt. Across the narrow chamber from Ivan, there was a man chained to the wall. He was dirty and bedraggled, with a thin, pointed beard and dark, unknowable eyes. 

To Ivan, looking at him was like looking at magic. 

“I could teach you magic,” said the man in chains, with a hungry smile. “I could help you find your sisters. I could save you from this world where you are chained, just as I am chained, and put you somewhere better. In fact, I have a fine fortress with a beautiful garden, and I would be pleased if you became my apprentice and joined me there. All you must do is free me from these silly little fetters.” 

Here, he rattled his chains mockingly. 

It was too good for Ivan to pass up. In this cellar, in this darkness, a man offered him the one thing he wanted most. It would be foolish for him to refuse him, and so he could not. He almost forgot that he had not told the man that he was searching for his sisters, and when the man spoke again, he forgot that he did not know his name. 

“All I need is a bit of your blood, and we can both flee this place.” 

Did Ivan want to flee? He did not know. Marya Morevna’s face swam into his mind, her beauty and the cruel set of her jaw when she set her mind to do something. He loved her, probably. But there was no blossoming of magic in the swing of her sword hand, and she saw him as a sort of pet, a toy for her to cherish and to love. Ivan reached into the pocket of his long robe. It was crocus-yellow, Marya’s favorite color, and she’d said it brought out the gold of his hair and the golden brown in his eyes. Was that all he was? Marya Morevna’s beautiful jewel of a pet? He couldn’t be. 

The little knife in his pocket was small but sharp. Marya had called it a man’s weapon, perfect for clipping flowers and defending oneself against overly amorous suitors. He thrust it into his palm, and the blood bloomed red. 

To the man like magic, he said, “What else must I do?” 

***

Marya saw the smoke from the road. One minute she was laughing at the general riding next to her, a tall, redheaded woman who whispered filthy things in her ear and who she’d promised she’d take to bed as soon as they returned, and the next, she saw the column of inky darkness rising from the palace and heard the screams. Something was terribly wrong, and she spurred her horse ahead, anxious to prevent whatever calamity she could. But she could only move so fast, and even before she reached her beloved home, she heard the crackling of flames and knew, without truly understanding, that Koschei the Deathless had escaped for a third and final time.

“No, no, no,” she whispered to the unheeding wind. “It cannot be true.” 

Koschei the Deathless had murdered her mother with unnatural magics. He sought to upend order by creating his own, and by setting himself up as the bogeyman of a thousand fireside stories. He wrote history to suit his own cruel needs, and Marya would never forgive him that. She would take that power from him with her own hands, she vowed. She would show Koschei the Deathless the true fury of a woman’s violence. 

Upon arriving in the courtyard, things were worse than Marya Morevna feared. A storm of men and women rushed out from the walls, and all around them, bodies littered the ground. The main buildings of the palace, which sheltered all Marya’s memories of childhood and kingship and hope, were on fire, red and orange pouring from their roofs and windows. And above them all, the smoke rose like a wicked god, and in it, a man was suspended, his tattered robes rippling in the breeze. 

“You never could best me, woman King,” he crowed. “No woman ever could.” 

“In that you are wrong, wizard,” Marya Morevna screamed. “My mother defeated you with me by her side. And our foremothers brought you low.” 

“But you could never restrain me as you wished.” 

“I’ll do better than restraints. I’ll kill you. I will undo your deathlessness.” 

Koschei laughed, a high falcon’s cry. 

“I’d like to see you try,” he said in a childish voice that carried too far. “Oh, and, lest I forget, it was so kind of you to send such a one as this to me. I’ll take good care of him, for he’s the next best thing I’ll have to marrying you and making you my possession.” 

He swept aside his tattered robes to reveal another man suspended in the dark smoke next to Koschei. It was, as Marya somehow knew she’d feared, Ivan Tsarevich, and his eyes were glazed with adoration and forgetfulness. Marya’s heart cracked like ice at thaw, and a fierce pain welled in her chest.  

“I’ll find him, I shall, and I’ll end you forever!” cried Marya Morevna, overcome with furious emotion.

But Koschei only laughed. And Ivan, looking down at her, cried out only one pitiable phrase, his eyes alight with a feverish glow of lust and desperation.

“He’ll give me magic!”

And then they were gone, and Marya Morevna, the warrior king who had won so many battles, and defeated all her foes, stood defeated in the courtyard of her burning palace, for she could do nothing to save a single foolish man.

***

Koschei’s palace stood above the grey salt sea on a high cliff, backed at one edge by a great forest, and when he alighted with Ivan, Ivan could smell the sea breeze. 

“You’ll be very happy here,” said the wizard, and Ivan gazed up at him with starry eyes. 

He would learn magic, damn all the odds. He was about to learn! 

Weeks passed, though, before their first lesson. They were perfectly pleasant days, although a storm blew in and the rain fell thickly over the cliffs and trees, and the waves roared on the rocks below the forest. Silent servants took Ivan’s crocus robe and brought him breeches and a tunic, as he had worn in the days before the kingdom of Marya Morevna. They were exceedingly soft, and black as the inky night. A maid brought in a looking glass one day, and Ivan found he looked dashing and haunted in these clothes, though not so haunted as the pale, gaunt Koschei. 

The first lesson took place at dinner, his first with Koschei since he was brought to the fortress. They ate simple peasant food, and Ivan looked down at it with wonder. 

“Magic,” said Koschei, “is about exchange and sacrifice. You must give up something that you value in order to gain powers. And if you cannot give up something of yourself, you must take something from another.” 

“I understand,” Ivan said. 

Koschei smiled, a thin little grin full of sharp, pointed teeth. 

“Good. Now, remember as well, the world is a wheel. This is the principle of exchange. I will take something from you, and in return, I shall give you something to fill that space. Come to me, little princeling.” 

Ivan went.

Koschei grasped his face in his thin fingers, and squeezed his chin. He pulled Ivan to himself and kissed him, not so strongly as Marya Morevna had, but his kiss was just as much a seal of ownership as hers had ever been. Ivan shivered, pleasure and fear combining into one painful whole. Koschei drew sharply away, and Ivan gasped, breathless and desirous of more. Koshei grabbed onto his hand, pulling him towards the door.

“Now, princeling, we must complete the exchange,” Koschei said, licking his lips with a thin, dark tongue. 

His hands fluttered to the hem of Ivan’s tunic, and Ivan allowed him to remove it as Koschei led hin from the dining room. Never had he felt more exposed to the elements than here in the darkness, under Koschei’s watchful gaze.

“We must complete the exchange,” Koschei repeated. 

And in a room next to the dining chamber, a room with a dark bed and thick walls, accompanied by nought but Ivan’s fear and the ashy reek of Koschei’s magic, they did. 

***

Marya Morevna found Baba Yaga’s Hut in a glade after many days of fruitless searching, and she pounded on the door like a woman possessed. She was only faintly aware of her transgression, for she knew that the Hut disliked being disturbed by frantic knocking, but in the frenzy left by Ivan’s betrayal, Marya had no time for decency. 

“I have the answer to your question, Baba Yaga! I know what you meant! Ivan has left me, for Koschei the Deathless!” 

The door flew open, and Marya fell in, landing on her hands and knees, her dark hair wild and pooling on the floor in front of her. Baba Yaga towered over her, angrily dusting her hands on her apron. 

“Bone-meal bread doesn’t take nicely to noise, girl. It won’t rise if you keep shouting like that, and I’m hungry for dinner. You’ll speak quietly in my house, king or no.” 

“I’m sorry, Baba Yaga. I’ll be quieter. Just tell me how to rescue him.” 

“Don’t go making demands from me. Come, sit down and have some brandy.” 

Baba Yaga poured Marya a glass of plum brandy, and brought her some bread. Marya drank the brandy, but did not touch the bread. She had heard too much about Baba Yaga’s taste for human flesh to risk her food. 

“Tell me what’s wrong, girl, and I’ll tell you the answer.” 

“I told you. Ivan’s gone with Koschei the Deathless, whom I kept imprisoned in my house bound only with fetters no magician could undo because I was foolish and foolhardy. I want to get him back, and I want to make my foremothers proud.” 

“You think you’ll make your foremothers proud with this unseemly display? Go home, rebuild your palace, and prepare for the next war. Kill that insolent wizard then, and forget the idiot boy.” 

“You must have foremothers, Baba Yaga. You must understand why I need to do this. It’s a matter of honor.” 

Baba Yaga looked at Marya Morevna, a withering glance devoid of both pity and amusement. 

“I am  _ the  _ Baba Yaga. It doesn’t matter who came before me, because there is always  _ a  _ Baba Yaga. Much as the son of the king of men is always  _ an  _ Ivan. It matters little which Ivan is chasing which maiden.” 

Marya looked down to the floor. It twitched. The Hut was getting restless. Her audience with Baba Yaga was nearly over.

“But some things are not eternal,” she said softly. “Will anyone remember my mother’s name in songs and tales? Or will she pass out of all memory save that of my people? And what of me?” 

Baba Yaga’s gaze was steely. 

“Koschei is Deathless. And only one. Wait for another Ivan, for he will come to you. And as for your mother, and as for you, there is always a woman king.” 

“But there is only one Marya Morevna.” 

“And what do you intend to do about that? No one remembers the woman king’s name.” Baba Yaga spat, phlegmy and white, on the floor. The Hut jerked. “No one shall, unless you give up your crown and go away with your Ivan. Out of curiosity, do you even care about him?” 

“He’s mine,” Marya said. “He is bound to me in blood and lust. I won him and he did not win me.” 

“Be careful, Marya Morevna. You are not eternal, and the boy has more love for magic than he has for you.” 

“He belongs to me.” 

“Magic owned his heart first. I heard him crying out for it. I’d have brought him here if I thought you’d unweight his gown and let him out of your bed,” Baba Yaga said. 

Marya looked up at Baba Yaga, at the old woman with her craggy face. Her mouth pressed together in a thin, white line, and she thought she saw Baba Yaga recoil.

“I will kill Koschei the Deathless. Not even the eternal can last forever. You yourself are proof of that.” 

Baba Yaga’s glance was pitying then, but shrewd as well. 

“Then you must find the bird-wives, who were once the princesses of Ivan’s realm. I wish you luck, Marya Morevna. Perhaps you will be remembered.” 

***

The quests and adventures Marya Morevna undertook to win her Ivan matter little, nor does the way she discovered how to end the life of a deathless wizard, for those are all stories for another cold night or another long summer twilight. We must not ruminate on how she came to encounter all the sisters of Ivan, or how they led her to the fortress of Koschei the Deathless, or how she rode on a magic horse given her by Baba Yaga. 

Likewise, we must not question or think on how Koschei thrust a pearl of magic into Ivan’s soul and twined his essence so deeply to that magic that there was little telling where Koschei’s lifeforce began and Ivan’s ended in the young man’s heart.

We must instead turn our eyes to Marya Morevna’s future, and to the eternal dance of time, of blood, and of desire. For the wheel always turns, so long as someone writes the stories.

***

When she kills Koschei, Marya’s face will be like stone and her eyes will be steel. She will not look at Ivan, crying on the floor as the magic drains from his body, as he wilts against her and she holds him up with her bloody hands. 

“I’m taking you home,” she will whisper into his bloody hair. “And you’ll never worry again.” 

Ivan’s eyes will be blank, and he will stare at Koschei’s burning corpse, the flames glittering in his glassy stare. He will never rule a kingdom again, not with the life-spark sucked from his lips as Koschei’s magic was sucked from his body. Marya will cradle his listeless form and carry him to Baba Yaga’s horse, and she will mount herself on Koschei’s steed. 

She will wonder what she ever saw in this fragile young man, in Ivan Tsarevich. 

The bird-wives will meet them on the road in a thrum of feathers, cooing soft as doves over their fallen brother. Marya will turn to the eldest, the one who shares her name. 

“What’s your husband called?” 

The falcon-wife will stiffen. 

“Why, Falcon.” 

“Close enough to Ivan. Tell me, falcon-wife, would you like to rule a kingdom?” 

The falcon-wife will nod, and Marya will smile her bitter, knife-edged smile. If Ivan Tsarevich has a bird’s beak, if Marya Morevna looks far too like Marya Tsarevna for comfort, well, that will be a dilemma for the kingdom of men. And if, despite their alliance, the kingdom of women goes marauding against the kingdoms of men, well, that is a problem for another day. There is always a woman king, even if the stories do not always record her name. The only thing that matters is that the stories get written. They may get the facts wrong, and they may say that Ivan Tsarevich rescued Marya Morevna from a dread wizard, but they will insure that things are remembered in the kingdoms of men. Of course, the storytellers of the kingdom of women will tell the stories rather differently.

***

And so, they pass out of life and into story, and Marya Morevna is both queen in the land of men and king in the land of women, and Ivan is much like any other Ivan in any other story in both lands. Marya the falcon-wife keeps her husband feather-free, and Marya the woman king makes sure there is always someone to tend to her erstwhile lover. She plans more subtle wars, inventories stores, worries herself over trade regulations, occasionally takes one of her generals to bed. Her sword grows rusty in its sheath and she does not seem to notice. 

When she visits Ivan, he stares straight ahead at the gaily painted wall. He never meets Marya’s eyes, and his hands are pale and cold on the coverlet. She can barely remember the hale young man who took her in his arms, who made her cry out with pleasure in the darkness of her chambers. He is lost somewhere behind those blank eyes. 

Marya Morevna doesn’t visit him often. 

But once a year, she opens a door to a cellar room. Rusted chains hang from the wall, and the floor is scorched black with magic and stained rusty with blood. In the room, Marya Morevna kneels on the dirt, and takes up a handful. It still churns with spellcraft, though Koschei is long dead. 

_So much blood,_ she thinks, when the dirt leaves reddish smears. _And was it worth it? Was all this blood worth it to be remembered?_ _  
_ And so, Marya Morevna, the woman king, her hair streaked with grey and her skin streaked with scars, goes out of the cellar and into the light, to the acclaim of her people and the love of her court. 

But the blood is still upon her hands. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this! I kind of took the free rein you gave me and ran with it. I guess that in a way, this is some kind of fantasy AU, heavily leaning into Marya's identity as a warrior queen and doing something of a role-reversal. That being said, I had a ton of fun writing it, so thank you for prompting this!  
> Title is from Arthur Rimbaud's _A Season in Hell_.


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